SHORTHAND GUIDE TO OPENSECRETS.ORG

(You need to create an account to access these, but they're both free, although subject to some use restrictions).

The website, generally, has a lot of places you can see data in various forms of improvement.

Finally, call us. Some work that might be a lot of work for you is easy for us, and doing work for reporters is part of our mission.

WHERE WE GET OUR STUFF:

The FEC: See Chris Schnaars' guide for a way you can DIY this, if for some reason you'd want to. Another good resource is Paul Clark, who works in their data office.

The FEC receives data from filers and the Senate and House, but before that data lands in their bulk data file, they go through an auditing process. This means that their bulk files are often delayed. You can collect the electronic data provided by filers, but this excludes all Senate filers and you'll need to clean up a lot of the junk in these files yourself.

The House: We use this to establish some links you can't see otherwise in the data.

The IRS: We collect both 527s data and "manifest" data related to nonprofits.

990 data can also be collected manually -- the IRS is often slower to respond to requests than the organizations themselves, who are required by law to provide you with their public documents, including their application materials when they're applying to be nonprofits.

Sometimes these groups can be squirrely.

Website Links

Donor lookup: Allow you to see individual contributions to candidates, PACs, 527s, etc. Searches the FEC-quality data, not CRP's data, so you need to look for all combinations of a donor's name.

New Expenditures Section: A pared-down version of all campaign expenditures, allowing you to see the top vendors for most campaign entities, as well as the vendors taking in the most political money generally. Coming soon: more!